Cheers to Solitude
There’s a certain age where society starts looking at single women the way grocery stores look at avocados: gently concerned and quietly checking for expiration dates.
Somewhere in your thirties, people stop asking if you’re happy and start asking if you’ve “met someone yet?” And maybe that’s because we’ve all been sold the same story since birth: that happiness exists somewhere outside of us, hidden inside another human being.
Sometimes I feel like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, frantically running around with a watch yelling, “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date,” except the date is entirely metaphorical. My window for happiness is supposedly shrinking with every tick of the clock because happiness, apparently, is sold by the pair.
Hurry up!
Find your person.
Find your soulmate.
Find your forever.
Preferably before freezing your eggs becomes a casual brunch topic discussed over overpriced mimosas.
I was certain once. I thought I had found the person. And turns out it was less carved in stone and more written in wet sand. And when it ended, there was this strange guilt that followed me around. Like I was somehow doing something wrong by not having another person to introduce at corporate holiday parties or someone to casually refer to as “babe” in conversation. My entire identity had quietly fused itself to the relationship without me even realizing it.
It’s taken me thirty-five years to understand that the fear of being alone is often what pushes people to seek out someone, unfortunately, sometimes just anyone. Because anyone can feel easier than enduring the quiet.
And to be fair, I don’t think women are the only ones sold this idea. Men just get a different version of it.
Women are handed conversations about biological clocks and settling down. Men get buried under expectations of status, success, money, and the pressure to appear emotionally indestructible at all times.
Different packaging. Same existential crisis.
Somewhere along the way, we started confusing being alone with being lonely.
If you’re not in a relationship, people assume something must be missing. There’s almost a moral judgment attached to solitude, like if no one has chosen you romantically, perhaps you should be placed under observation.
But solitude is not the same thing as loneliness.
Loneliness is feeling abandoned inside your own life. Solitude is finally feeling at home in it.
And yes, occasionally there’s still that voice. Usually around midnight. Or after two glasses of wine and a concerning amount of TikTok scrolling.
The voice that whispers:
You’re falling behind.
You should be trying harder.
Everyone else figured it out.
But I’ve started to realize that voice doesn’t actually belong to me. It belongs to movies, relatives, algorithms, and a culture that treats romantic partnership like the final level of human evolution.
It’s wild to think that a single woman or man must surely be unfinished. But maybe some of us aren’t unfinished.
Maybe some of us are finally introducing ourselves to who we are without constantly trying to become who someone else needs us to be.
And despite all of this, I still believe in love. I think the world would be a much darker place if we didn’t.
But what love looks like, and when it arrives, should be up to you, not dictated by societal timelines or expectations.
And until then, there is nothing tragic about learning how to belong to yourself first.
xoxo,
